A special poem by Chengde Chen to launch the new blog
How to Refute Dawkins’ Atheism
Dear Professor Dawkins,
Yes, your bestseller, The God Delusion, is bought by millions;
more so your TV debates taking on archbishops, hotly YouTubed.
“No belief without evidence”, your atheist crusade is convincing,
like sounding the new death-knell of religion, with web power.
When the believers defend faith with Scripture,
you dare them to “walk on water” or “turn water into wine”.
When they count the moral good religion brings,
you attribute enough wars and scandals to the Church.
When they’re lost for words, or deeds, and God is laughed at,
you harvest applause, like the invincible spokesman of reason.
However, let me ask you a hypothetical question:
“If you knew it was the case that, without the fear of God,
human society would collapse, would you still reject religion?”
If you say “yes”, surely you would see how irrational you were –
worse than cutting off a man’s head to treat his headache.
A rational person, as you firmly claim to be, has to say “no” –
doesn’t this mean faith could be justified without evidence?
Reason has two functions: seeking truth and weighing expediency;
if we can’t tell if it’ll rain, we’ll carry an umbrella as a precaution.
Since “God’s existence” can neither be proved, nor disproved,
it’s reasonable for man to discipline himself with the imagination,
which wasn’t a “delusion” that happened to occur in all cultures,
but a spiritual organ driven by the evolutionary need to coexist.
Without the simple idea of the-Almighty-for-good-and-against-evil,
what could have turned a race of jungle animal into a moral being?
True or not, the great invention of man’s “second heart”
deserves Nobel returning to history to award his best prize!
Yours sincerely,
An agnostic-who-explains-religion-with-evolution
Readers can find out more about Chengde and his poems here
Dear Mister Chen
ReplyDeleteI don't know when
But there was an old lady who died
If they had known it the children had cried
So they said she'd be back in nine days or ten
Dear Mister Chen
I wish I had known it back then
I had a great need of religion
Yet my hope could not ever be won
I was worse than the most pitied of men
But dear Mister Chen
It's a magnanimous pen
With which you have written your creed
If only the more strident among us would heed
The writings of Chegnde Chen
Dear Mister Chen
ReplyDeleteI don't know when
But there was an old lady who died
If they had known it the children had cried
So they said she'd be back in nine days or ten
Dear Mister Chen
I wish I had known it back then
I had a great need of religion
Yet my hope could not ever be won
I was worse than the most pitied of men
But dear Mister Chen
It's a magnanimous pen
With which you have written your creed
If only the more strident among us would heed
The writings of Chegnde Chen
I like the first two verses best.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that Christianity is all about fear of death, and as there is no literal solution to THAT problem - its appeal has essentially been cultish. For example, there are aat least three cases in the New Testament of bodies being miraculously resurrected from the dead, after being buried 'n' all, which we must interpret allegorically these days, but clearly were for centuries supposed to be literal demonstrations fo the advantages to folk of being Christian.
I like the first two verses best.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that Christianity is all about fear of death, and as there is no literal solution to THAT problem - its appeal has essentially been cultish. For example, there are aat least three cases in the New Testament of bodies being miraculously resurrected from the dead, after being buried 'n' all, which we must interpret allegorically these days, but clearly were for centuries supposed to be literal demonstrations fo the advantages to folk of being Christian.
Yes, most religions were motivated by the desire of "life after death". The sociological essence of religion is an incentive machnism: if you do good you will be awarded of that. I've added a few lines to the ending of the poem:
ReplyDeleteOne thing religion should correct is telling detailed stories of God.
The God we believe in is an abstract moral force, beyond science.
Physically real or not, the great invention of man’s “second heart”
deserves Nobel returning to history to award his highest prize.
Some functions of religion may be substituted by education, but,
even becoming an “appendix”, it is the origin of law and morality.
Your atheism is, in fact, delusions of grandeur blind to evolution –
risking retrogression to trample on the ancestry of civilization!
Yours sincerely,
An agnostic-who-explains-religion-with-evolution
Yes, most religions were motivated by the desire of "life after death". The sociological essence of religion is an incentive machnism: if you do good you will be awarded of that. I've added a few lines to the ending of the poem:
ReplyDeleteOne thing religion should correct is telling detailed stories of God.
The God we believe in is an abstract moral force, beyond science.
Physically real or not, the great invention of man’s “second heart”
deserves Nobel returning to history to award his highest prize.
Some functions of religion may be substituted by education, but,
even becoming an “appendix”, it is the origin of law and morality.
Your atheism is, in fact, delusions of grandeur blind to evolution –
risking retrogression to trample on the ancestry of civilization!
Yours sincerely,
An agnostic-who-explains-religion-with-evolution